


Silence is Golden (but Hannah Prefers Cash)

by R5h



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: F/F, Hamanda, Shroombot, mute character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24556078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R5h/pseuds/R5h
Summary: After a magical accident leaves Hannah at a loss for words, she and Constanze go on an adventure that forces Hannah to think about some things she's been avoiding for a long time.A story about communication, and about figuring out who you are.
Relationships: Constanze Amalie von Braunschbank Albrechtsberger & Hannah England, Constanze Amalie von Braunschbank Albrechtsberger/Sucy Manbavaran, Hannah England/Amanda O'Neill
Comments: 35
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hikarilie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikarilie/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Hikarilie! Other chapters to be posted as soon as I can finish them.

Like most problems in Hannah's life, this one ended up being entirely Akko's fault.

The situation was about as normal as any day at Luna Nova could be: Akko in class, screwing up yet another spell, and Hannah watching from the sidelines, trying not to laugh. In fairness, 'trying not to laugh' was new. Usually Hannah would have spent her time with Barbara, who was sitting next to her, coming up with the choicest of jibes with which to mock Akko.

But no. Now that Akko had helped Diana save the world or whatever, Diana had barred the both of them from mocking her... or anyone else on the Red or Green, really. Which was making life _really boring_.

“Barbara,” Hannah whined. But quietly, because this was Badcock's class, and she didn't tolerate _much_ talking during class. Ursula, or Chariot, or whoever she was now, basically allowed as much as Hannah could want: Finnelan allowed none. “Barb, I'm bored. What are you doing after school today?”

“Ssh,” Barbara replied.

Hannah blinked, then glanced at her friend. Barbara was staring intently at the ludicrous display in front of them, and taking notes. Hannah stared at her for a few seconds, and then at what she was looking at.

“ _Taciturnitas!_ ” Akko yelled, standing in the front of the class, pointing her wand at a ringing alarm clock. For the sixth consecutive time, it kept ringing in defiance of her silencing spell. Akko growled in frustration, and made to throw her wand at the clock—

“You're getting closer,” Diana said, standing beside her and holding up a hand. Akko stopped mid-throw. “Remember, a quiet mind is the key to the silencing spell.”

Hannah snorted at that—technically not a laugh—because she was pretty sure that if you plugged Akko's brain into a speaker, you would get either really loud static or a non-stop playlist of Shiny Chariot facts. What you _definitely_ wouldn't get was _quiet_. The girl didn't know when to shut up.

“What are you _doing_ ,” she continued to whine at Barbara. “There's nothing to take notes on, she's just failing like always! Let's hang out after school! It's not like you're doing anything later, right?”

Barbara's response was terse, as if she actually cared about focusing on her notes or something. “Actually, I am. With Lotte.”

The alarm clock rang again.

“ _Lotte?_ The—” Hannah caught herself before she could say 'paperweight', and managed, “very nice girl? But she's so... _so...._ ” There had to be a way to express this without technically being insulting, right?

“We share mutual interests. Now, _ssh_.”

“Oh, don't tell me. 'Mutual interests' means Nightfall, right?”

Barbara did not respond. The alarm clock seemed to be getting louder.

“Sheesh, it's Nightfall Nightfall Nightfall with you these days. What's _with_ that?”

“At least I _have_ interests.” Barbara finally turned to face her, glaring. “What do _you_ talk about, except how other people are losers? It's getting old, Hannah!”

“Yeah—well—” Hannah stood abruptly. She wasn't sure what else to do. “At least I'm not into _lame nerd stuff_ —”

“ _Taciturnitas_ —oh jeez get down!”

Akko cast the spell again. It struck the clock. It rebounded _off_ the clock, and flew through the air, and by the time Hannah realized it was coming right at her, it had already smacked her right in the forehead. It felt like being slapped.

“Hannah?” Barbara gasped.

She reeled back for a few seconds, before leaning forward, and opening her mouth, and letting loose. “ _Akko Kagari_ , you _incompetent_ buffoon! If that spell had actually _worked_ , you could have really hurt—”

She stopped. Then she opened her mouth again and tried to scream as loud as she could, and not a single noise came out.

Of _all_ the times for one of Akko's spells to work.

* * *

“Did the nurse tell you how long it would be?” Diana asked.

Hannah, who was lying in a hospital bed—not like she needed one, what was the _point_ of this anyway—opened her mouth to say, “Yes, she told me....” And then, for the umpteenth time in the last hour, she remembered that she still couldn't talk. She could barely make any noise at all. If she breathed really _really_ hard she could kind of grunt.

She settled for a nod and a silent sigh.

“A whole week.” Diana sighed too, more successfully. “I'm sorry you're going through this. Please don't distract Akko again while she's spellcasting, so this doesn't happen in future.”

As Hannah was processing that, she found a notepad and pencil held in front of her. “I thought you might need these,” Diana said, “to communicate. I don't know how you're going to do magic like this, but at least you'll be able to talk.”

Hannah took them, nodding a little. Still processing.

Diana stood up. “Is there anything you need? Just let me know.”

Hannah looked up at her, feeling a cold pit in her stomach, because she'd finished processing what was strange about Diana's statement. She'd said that she was sorry for Hannah, but also—in all but exact words—had told her it was her own fault. And while the apology had been rote, the blame had had a note of vehemence.

And when was Diana ever wrong?

Hannah took a breath, then wrote: _I'd like to be left alone for a while._

Diana nodded. “I'll see you later. Best of luck.” With a small smile, she turned and left the hospital wing, leaving Hannah as alone as she felt.

* * *

It was an hour later, maybe more, when Hannah trudged out of her bed. Being alone, as it turned out, hadn't helped her mood at all: she'd just had time to replay in her mind what Diana had said. Even better, what _Barbara_ had said.

_At least I have interests!_

Hannah felt her jaw clench as _that_ particular sound bite played in her head. She sighed, tried to relax, and nodded to the on-duty nurse as she walked out of the room. Where she was going, she wasn't sure exactly: normally she'd head back to the room, but did either Barbara or Diana want to talk to her right now?

“ _Jesus_ , I thought you'd never leave.”

Well, that flipped the script a bit. Hannah jumped, and looked up at someone who _she_ didn't want to talk to. (As if she had the option right now.) “What are you—” she tried to say, before rolling her eyes and writing on her pad. _What are you—_

She didn't get any further before Amanda O'Neill took her shoulder and started guiding her in a direction. “Akko told me what happened. She says she's very sorry or whatever, I don't care, you two work that out later. And to answer your question, Little Mermaid, I'm here to help you find a voice.”

Hannah tried to dig in her heels, and looked up at Amanda with a questioning stare. Amanda looked back, just as questioningly. “Y'know? Ariel? Part of your world? With the bow, and the ponytail, and....” When those random, disconnected words failed to spark any recognition in Hannah, Amanda groaned. “Jeez, Hannah, would it kill you to watch a movie once in a while? Now come on.”

It was pretty clear that either Amanda was going to guide her, or push her, where she was going. Feeling unusually defeated, Hannah stopped digging in her heels and opted for the former option.

They walked up a couple flights of stairs before Hannah realized where they had to be going: the green team dorm. She'd only been once or twice, when Amanda had insisted on dragging all three teams into a movie night: Hannah had always made an excuse to leave early. She wasn't sure what excuse she could make right now.

Before long, they were there, and Amanda kicked the door in. “Behold! The person who's going to _oh come on what is she working on now_.”

Hannah looked at the room. Jasminka was sitting on the top bunk, munching away as usual. Which meant....

She scrawled on her notepad, _You wanted me to see Braunschbank-Albrechtsberger?_ Well, she tried to. Around the time she was trying to remember if 'Braunschbank' had a C or not, Amanda had stalked over to the empty single bed, and pressed a spot on the wall indistinguishable from everything around it.

The spot sank in, then slid to the side, and a microphone popped out of the hole it left. Amanda tapped the mic a few times. “Testing, testing? Alpha Oscar November to Charlie Alpha Victor Bravo Alpha—got something I want to talk about. Come on up!”

A few seconds passed, as the microphone retracted into the wall. Hannah glanced from side to side. “Wait for it,” Amanda said.

The bed opened up like a lid, and Constanze blasted out of it—almost hitting the ceiling at the peak of her ascent, before the bed closed back up under her. Hannah blinked a few times, as Constanze walked to the edge of the bed and shot Amanda a questioning look, before glancing and sideways-nodding at Hannah.

“Good question,” Amanda said, crossing her arms behind her head. “I brought her here because I figured you could help her out.”

Constanze tilted her head to the side, apparently confused.

“I dunno, similar life experiences? And we're supposed to all be friends now or whatever, so come on, be friendly!”

Constanze made a complicated series of hand gestures. Hannah had no idea what they were or meant.

“What—” Amanda sputtered, then laughed. “You're crazy! I'm just being friendly like _you're_ supposed to be—”

Another series of gestures. A roll of the eyes.

“This is _not_ like that time in Austin! Completely different scene!”

“It's _kind of_ like that time in Austin,” Jasminka said from the top bunk.

“Oh, _you too?_ ”

Hannah stomped her foot, and all of them looked at her, and she held out her hands in utter bewilderment because _how the hell were they communicating with Constanze?_

Amanda smirked. “I understand her because we're _friends_ and I _pay attention_. But also because Constanze has been talking without talking her whole life. She's really good at it.”

Constanze smiled with pride at that, for just a moment, before returning to her usual dour face.

“So I thought,” Amanda said, ambling over to throw an arm around Hannah's shoulders “that since you can't talk either, you could learn a few pointers from her so the next... how long is it gonna be, a week or something?” Hannah nodded. Amanda continued, “So that the next week isn't so shitty.”

Hannah raised her pencil and pad, and tapped the two together.

“Well, first of all, that's slower than what Consey does. But second of all, you need to go to classes, right? Classes where you need to _do magic?_ ” Amanda stared at her. “Let me ask you this. How do you think Constanze hasn't flunked out of Luna Nova, if you need to be able to talk to cast spells?

Hannah paused for a few seconds. She'd never really thought about that. (Of course, she'd never really thought about Constanze at all, beyond what was necessary to come up with half a dozen insults to be used at short notice.) _I guess,_ she wrote, _the school gave her some kind of accommodation?_

Amanda snorted. Then she outright laughed. “ _Accommodation?_ From _Luna Nova?_ Have you seen the shit Akko has to deal with?” The laughter ceased, and she shook her head. “Constanze knows how to cast _wordless magic._ She's really good at it.”

Hannah's eyes widened. Wordless magic? That was _really_ advanced stuff, something they might learn at the _end_ of their time at Luna Nova. How could Constanze know it already?

“Yeah, I see your face. Bet you feel like you really overlooked her, huh? No pun intended. Consey's taught me and Jaz how to do it too. And she could teach you—”

Constanze shook her head and folded her arms.

“—except she's being a _whiny baby_ about it.”

Amanda unhooked her arm from around Hannah's shoulders, at which point it occurred to Hannah that it had been there for a full minute and she hadn't tried to shake it off. Before she could dwell on the ramifications of that, Amanda was stomping over to Constanze, towering over her as she argued. “Come on! What else are you even doing? We both know you're not making any progress on that project.”

Not that Constanze seemed at all threatened, or even impressed, by Amanda's bluster. She held her palms up for a moment.

“Because you don't have the thing! The, uh, the thing you told me—”

Another series of hand gestures.

“Yes, the mithrillium for the generator! That thing, thank you!”

Constanze smirked.

“What, you found it? _Where?_ ”

It was at this point that Hannah gave up on trying to follow what Constanze's hands were doing, and instead let her eyes wander. She wondered if she'd be able to leave soon.

“Wow, really? That's a hike, and I don't think you'd wanna go in there alone. Tell you what.” Amanda kneeled, placing her and Constanze at eye level. “I'll help you go get it, and in return, you help Hannah out. How's that sound, huh?”

Constanze frowned, looking up at the ceiling as she hummed slightly. Then, she shook her head sharply.

“No? But—”

And pointed her finger right at Hannah.

Hannah jolted where she stood, looking at the finger, then at Amanda. Amanda, thankfully, got her question. “Consey says she'll help you out. _But_. You have to help her out first.” Then Amanda grimaced, and whispered at Constanze as if Hannah couldn't still hear her: “You sure about this? She's not gonna be that helpful if she can't cast spells, and I don't want you two getting hurt—I mean, I'll go instead if you want—”

Hannah opened her mouth, closed it, and gritted her teeth. _That was it._ She was tired of not being able to join in on a conversaton.

She stomped her foot, interrupting Amanda's muttering, and wrote three words on her pad. _I'll do it._


	2. Chapter 2

_I'll do it._

A day later, Hannah glanced at those words on that pad. Then, she looked back at what those three words had signed her up for.

It had taken her and Constanze a solid hour of flying to get to their destination: a cave, hidden in the mountains of Switzerland, with strange runic markings around the edge. They didn't look like any language or symbolism that Hannah could understand, but they filled her with unease, and she didn't think it was a magical effect.

After setting her broom down against the mountain, she took her pad and wrote, though her penmanship was a little shaky: _And you're sure it's here?_

Constanze nodded, and pointed at the cave. Her movements were a bit slow and exaggerated, and Hannah felt like she was getting the nonverbal equivalent of baby talk here. On the other hand—so to speak—she'd seen how fluidly incomprehensible Constanze's gestures could get to people who could, well, _comprehend_ her. This was probably for the best.

Still rankled, though. _You know_ , she wrote, _there is such a thing as sign language. Why not just use that?_

Constanze tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowed skeptically. If Hannah had to guess, and unfortunately she did, Constanze was asking a question: _Do you_ know _sign language?_

 _No, I don't know it_ , she wrote. _Still seems like a good idea._

Constanze opened and closed one hand as if operating a sock puppet: _blah, blah, blah._ Or possibly, judging by her eye roll: _criticize, criticize, criticize._ It didn't matter.

Hannah folded her arms. _Let's just get this over with_ was what she would have said, if she could talk. It wasn't worth writing down, so instead she just strode forward—only for Constanze to hold up a hand. _What?_ she wrote.

Constanze pointed at the notebook, then shook her head _no_.

 _I need it to talk to you! If we're supposed to work together—_ Hannah flipped to a new page— _then we need to be able to communicate. I can't even do magic and you want me to give this up too?_

Constanze sighed, very quietly, and pulled out her own wand. She closed her eyes for a moment, then jabbed it forward: a green laser light blazed into existence, then broke up and twisted into shapes, into letters:

_The point is for you to learn how to communicate without the notepad. It's a crutch right now. And it won't help you do magic._

Scowling, Hannah jabbed her pencil at the paper again: _You need a crutch when your LEG IS BROKEN_

She didn't even bother to punctuate the message, and her vehemence seemed to do the trick: Constanze stared at her for a few seconds, then shrugged and turned away. She walked toward the cave, and Hannah followed suit.

The entryway wasn't any larger than a pair of double doors, but what lay just beyond it was _much_ larger. It was so large, in fact, that Hannah couldn't see the walls, because her and Constanze's bodies in the entryway blocked out most of the light from the doorway. Constanze looked around, then flicked her wand and—apparently without thinking about it very hard—cast a light spell.

Hannah stared at the glowing tip of Constanze's wand. She pulled out her own wand and shook it a few times, even tried mouthing the words. No dice. She gestured at Constanze, trying not to look _too_ supplicative even as she was clearly asking for help.

Constanze looked at her in the eye. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, then shook her head sharply: then she tapped her forehead with the wand, and nodded.

Right. So it was about thinking the spell, not saying it. Hannah closed her eyes, and screwed up her face, and thought the spell as hard as she could: _Lampada! Lampada! Lampada!_ Then she dared to creak her eye open... and there the glow was. Faint, but present. She smiled: apparently wordless magic wasn't as hard as she'd thought.

Constanze stared skeptically at Hannah's meager illumination, and rolled her eyes—and Hannah's pride vanished. _Nine_ , she could barely do a _light_ spell. Who was she, Akko?

But no time for shame: Constanze shook her wand a few more times, and as it grew brightger and brighter, the space around them was fully illuminated. Now, Hannah could see that it was as wide as an aircraft carrier, and it wasn't clear how deep. Moreover, there was more writing on the walls, and though it still wasn't language, Hannah could understand it.

It wasn't hard, after all, to understand the crudely drawn images of dozens of dead humans. (At least, they didn't look like they were sleeping.)

Hannah blinked. Then she turned around and tried to walk right back out, thank you very much—only for Constanze to grab her jacket and tug, _hard_. The girl didn't _look_ that strong, but Hannah found herself reeling back into the dark. She sighed, then resigned herself to following Constanze deeper into the cave.

Although, as Hannah looked around... 'cave' didn't seem like the right word. The more she and Constanze walked forward, the more she saw that the walls were smooth despite their obvious age, and didn't deviate from their course. The more she saw of new strange symbols: lines of them, stacked atop one another, and some that seemed to belong to different alphabets.

This structure was manmade. Or, more likely, magicmade.

Hannah's gaze lingered on another image, larger than the rest: a humanoid figure, with two heads instead of one. Then she grunted to get Constanze's attention, and when the girl looked her way, she started to write: _Constanze, what is—_ but Constanze rolled her eyes again. Hannah sighed, put the notepad in her back pocket, and tried to sign it out as best as she could. Pointing at the walls around them, holding her hands out in a questioning way. _Constanze, what is this place?_

Constanze looked at her for a moment, then shrugged and kept walking.

Hannah got in front of her. Did a shrug of her own, but so exaggerated it strained her shoulders: a _parody_ of a shrug. _What do you mean, you don't know?_

Constanze jabbed her pointer finger deeper in the cave. Clearly she wasn't interested in having this discussion.

Hannah didn't care. She waved her hands around; holding them up to her sides, then pointing at herself and Constanze, and then walking her fingers through the air. Hopefully her meaning was clear.

Constanze stared at her for several seconds, head cocked to the side.

Okay, maybe not so clear. Hannah sighed and grabbed the notepad of defeat once again, and wrote: W _hy are we doing this?_ _What's so important about this mithrillium?_ _What are you trying to make?_

Constanze stared at her, cheeks puffed up with annoyance—or was it just annoyance? Some of Hannah's latent bully instincts picked up: there was something going on here. Constanze was _embarrassed_ about this.

Hannah leaned in. _This isn't just any project, is it? It's special. Why?_

Constanze glanced from side to side, and then drew a shape in the air with her index fingers. A box, with something at the top—a bow.

 _It's a gift!_ Hannah grinned. _Who's it for?_

Constanze shook her head, as if that could possibly get her to stop asking.

Hannah rolled her eyes, and did up her hair like Akko's with that weird half-ponytail do she had. She shot Constanze a questioning glance, but no response, so she mussed up her hair, turned her hairbow into an impromptu headband, and held up her fingers as circles over her eyes.

No response there either, so clearly it wasn't Lotte. Hannah smirked, then rearranged her hair once more: long and straight, with bangs covering one eye.

Constanze flinched.

Hannah smirked. _Oh my god. You have a crush on Sucy. That's hilarious!_

Constanze's hands clenched into fists.

_Is that relationship going to work? Unless you own a mushroom costume, I don't see her being that into—_

Before Hannah could finish, Constanze jerked forward and slapped her writing hand, knocking her pencil from her grasp. Hannah gasped, and ran for it before it could disappear into the darkness. Thankfully she was able to grab it before it could roll too far.

She returned to the radius of light around Constanze's, but before Hannah could start ripping into her, she noticed Constanze had also done up her hair. It was wild, pointing up in tufts, just like—

Constanze pointed at her hair. Then made a heart shape with both hands. Then pointed at Hannah.

Hannah squinted at her. _What?_ she mouthed, because even when Constanze pointed at the hair that looked like Amanda, then made a heart, then pointed at Hannah, it wasn't clear what it meant. Okay, sure, there was _one_ thing it could mean, but that thing was obviously stupid and absurd and also stupid, so—

And now Constanze was pointing at _her_ , and then making the heart, and then doing the Amanda hair. Hannah felt her mouth twisting into a snarl. She wanted to shout _S_ _hut up_ _!_ , but had to settle for stomping her foot.

Constanze nodded, hard enough for her hair to fall back into its usual position. Then she leaned up and tapped Hannah's temple, and drew something in the air: the numeral zero.

Hannah growled, and wrote: _I'm not stupid!_

But Constanze had had enough, apparently: she snatched the notepad and pencil from Hannah and started writing on her own, in miniscule handwriting.

 _She likes you, and I have no idea why, because there is nothing going on in your_ _life_ _—_ _not even that you're stupid_ _. You just make fun of people, and now you can't even do that. Amanda deserves better than that. Amanda deserves someone who's actually a person._

With that, Constanze shoved the pad and pencil back into Hannah's hands. It took several seconds for Hannah to be able to grab them. The second she did, Constanze strode off into the darkness without waiting for her.

Hannah sucked in a breath, holding up her own wand for illumination as Constanze's light moved away. She glanced, once more, at the two-headed image on the wall. Then she hurried after Constanze.

* * *

They heard it before they saw it.

Constanze held out an arm, stopping Hannah, and for a moment Hannah didn't know why—but she understood when she heard the sound, right at the bottom of her hearing. A low, repeated boom, like a giant's footsteps.

In a way, it was a relief for Hannah: for the last several minutes she'd been stuck thinking about either her sad wandlight, or Constanze's condemnation. _Amanda deserves someone who's actually a person._ Which wouldn't bother her, because who cared what _Constanze_ thought—but it was basically what Barbara had said too, and if two people were saying it then that meant—

So in one way, the booming footsteps were a relief. Unfortunately, in a larger way, they were _terrifying_.

Hannah lifted her notebook and pencil and tried to write, but her hand was shaking. Probably just because of the floor's vibrations, and no other reason. _What are we going to do?_ she tried to write, with limited success.

By the time she finished writing it, she saw Constanze assembling a gun. _What?_ Hannah mouthed, as Constanze bolted on piece after piece from pockets around her coat, finishing by jamming her wand in the barrel. It looked like the kind of gun that bodyguards protected heads of state with, and was probably about as long as Constanze was tall, but she wielded it with obvious ease.

Hannah took a step forward, but Constanze glared at her. She jabbed a finger at Hannah, then the ground under her feet, and lastly drew the finger across her lips. _Stay here, keep quiet._ Which was either redundant or insulting, depending how charitable Hannah was feeling (not at all charitable, at the moment).

Then again, what else was she supposed to do, with her magic that didn't really work? So Hannah found a nearby wall to sit against—a wall that rose free-standing from the ground, unconnected to the larger cave wall—and sat down. If Constanze wanted to be the one to deal with whatever that was, she wasn't going to raise her voice in protest.

She slumped against the wall in resignation—and then frowned. Hard ridges were poking into her back. Scooting away from the wall, she tried to increase the brightness of her wand—with little success—and examined the surface, expecting nothing more than the same incomprehensible symbols or gruesome imagery that she'd seen before.

Instead, she was faced with a diagram of her own solar system.

There was no mistaking it: a large ball at the center for the Sun, and multiple other balls arrayed around it, with their orbits drawn in thin lines. Earth had some vague continents drawn in, and Saturn got rings, but the rest were simple circles differentiated only by size.

Hannah stared. She looked around, and noticed for the first time that this wall was one of many around her, arranged in a grid like bookshelves in a library. Staying low to the ground, she hurried to the next one over, and saw another diagram: three circles connected by two lines, with the middle circle larger, next to some sort of waves—this could be a rough diagram of the atomic structure of water.

The next wall after that had what might have been a cauldron, and potion ingredients. If Hannah recognized the ingredients by shape, and she was pretty sure she did, then this was a fairly simple potion from class. And there were still dozens more walls to see.

What kind of place was hidden in a mountain, had creepy cave drawings, but also a treasure trove of knowledge and some super special magic metal hidden away?

Hannah didn't have enough time to think about that question, because from behind her came the sound of an explosion.

She jumped to her feet without conscious thought, pressing her back against the wall, then edged over to the side. Slowly, she peeked past the edge, whence came more sounds of battle and those deep, terrible footsteps. And in the distance, two red lights.

Then, a lighter set of footsteps, making a dissonant rhythms with the approaching booms behind. Constanze ran out of the dark with her gun in her hands, lighting up the walls to either side. She wheeled around and blasted into the darkness, then jumped between two walls and out of Hannah's sight, leaving those red lights behind her.

A second later, the green blast of light from her gun impacted against some hulking shape in the darkness. The shape those lights were attached to.

Hannah's breath froze in her throat as it approached, closer and closer, her imagination filling in the details that her eyes couldn't yet. Eight feet tall at least, maybe ten or twelve. A rough body, like some kind of crude pottery. Grossly exaggerated proportions, with a chest and arms like the winner of a strongman competition.

And then, as it came into the light, she saw all of it, and saw the two red lights—on two separate heads. Or at least a crude suggestion of a head, more a shape with an indentation on it, like a cheap speaker. Each head swiveled independently, searching for its lost prey.

It was just like the image she'd seen on the cave wall. The one next to all the pictures of dead people.

As she yanked her head back behind the wall, Hannah was really glad she couldn't scream.

The stomping stopped. A faint sound of stone scraping against stone replaced it. Above Hannah's head, beams of red—searchlights—rotated through the air. Then they pivoted down, and she saw one sweeping past the aisle next to her.

Swearing a silent oath that she would wring Constanze's stupid tiny throat for this later, Hannah turned around and crawled away, past several more of the informational walls. If she got far enough away, then she could just let Constanze deal with it like she clearly wanted to, and Hannah could just sit in the dark until it was all over—

The floor around her lit up red. She looked up and noticed that the wall she was currently next to had been worn down by time, so much so that it had a large chunk fallen out. That large chunk had left a gap large enough for the golem to be able to see her.

Oh no.

Crawling was for idiots. Hannah got up and ran as the beam blasted through the empty space where she'd just been, and she kept running as she heard the impact. But her side was still painted in red, though the color came and went as she ran past wall after wall: the golem was tracking her. It fired another shot, and Hannah pushed herself harder, and was rewarded with the sound of the laser striking just behind her.

Spinning around as she ran, Hannah pointed her wand at the golem and thought the word _Murowa_ as hard as she could. What came out of her wand was a little _fart_ of light that didn't even reach the giant. It fizzled and sank to the floor, like a punctured balloon losing the last of its air.

Turning around had been a mistake, and not just because of how pitiful her spell was: as she ran backward, her heels collided with more debris underfoot. She flailed for a few seconds, but fell hard on her rear.

Her notebook, which she'd been holding in her non-wand hand the whole time, went flying out of the radius of her light.

Hannah's eyes widened, and she looked around frantically, trying to see which way it had gone. Then she remembered that was stupid because, oh god, the golem had gotten closer. It was standing right above her, looking down at her with both eyes, and her whole body was lit up in the darkness like she was doing a soliloquy.

The golem stared at her. She raised her wand, and thought as many terrible spells as she could, as forcefully as she could, and nothing happened. With a silent yelp, she flinched away and waited for whatever horrible fate was coming.

But a few seconds later—

_Blam!_

Something smashed into the golem's far side. It froze, then one of its heads swiveled around to look the other way, and Hannah craned her neck to look around it. Constanze was standing there, wandgun smoking as she pumped the forestock and aimed for another blast.

Constanze caught Hannah's eye. She made an aggressive motion with her head, then aimed the gun again. What did that mean, even? Run away? Throw a rock at it?

Hannah did neither of those: after all, the golem still had one beam on her, even as it stomped toward Constanze. Constanze did the head motion again, _which was not helpful_ , and fired off a few blasts at the thing's heads. The blasts went wide.

The golem fired. Constanze, her expression furious, fired down at the ground at the same time, and a dome of blue energy sprouted around her to take the hit. The golem kept firing on it, but the dome kept its structural integrity, though it seemed to require a steady stream of magic from Constanze's weapon. She was gritting her teeth, and tore her eyes away from the golem for just a moment to look at Hannah.

And she did the _same stupid head gesture again_.

Hannah stood up and threw up her hands. _I don't know what you're saying!_ she yelled at the top of her lungs, which was still no volume at all.

Constanze growled. But then, the golem stopped firing its blasts—for a moment. The second head swiveled away from Hannah and toward Constanze, and before Hannah could imagine that this was her chance to do—something, both heads lit up in brilliant red.

They fired a single, solid _beam_ of light at Constanze's shield. White cracks spread across the surface. Constanze gritted her teeth, and raised her gun to pump more energy into the shield, but it was no use: the beam broke through. Constanze's gun went flying, somewhere in the darkness, and its light went out.

Now, Constanze was bathed in a sickly red glow like Hannah had been, as the golem advanced upon her. She curled her hands into fists, and raised them—

Hannah closed her eyes and ran.

She ran past the golem, and scooped up Constanze, and turned hard to the left, and only then—as the golem's blast struck the ground behind her—did she dare to open her eyes. She ran, further into the darkness, until the booming of the golem's feet and the blasts from its heads faded into nothing. Until the only thing she could hear was her own panicked breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out that when you're used to writing verbal dialog, it can be really tough to write a whole chapter where no one speaks out loud! That's part of why this chapter took way longer than expected.
> 
> The third and final chapter should be coming soon. I hope you all enjoy this!


	3. Chapter 3

So, there was technically good news. Hannah had managed to carry Constanze away from the danger, and now they were in a dark antechamber, panting in the aftermath of their retreat from the golem. That was the entire singular sentence of good news.

The bad news was a lot more numerous. Hannah's notebook was gone, and Constanze's gun was too—and her wand with it. The only wand between them was Hannah's, and the single time Constanze reached out for it, Hannah snatched it away: even if the only light she could produce was dim, it was still _her_ wand. Also, in her panic to escape the golem, she'd kind of sort of gotten _incredibly_ lost, and now was certainly deeper into the cave than before. Any way out would go past the golem.

And, of course: _she_ _still couldn't talk._

Hannah ground her teeth against each other, but then released them and sighed.

Some movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she turned to see Constanze glaring at her. She was signing some kind of message, but Hannah didn't know or care what it was. Probably something about how stupid she was, or how much she'd screwed up this whole operation. And honestly, Hannah was inclined to agree.

God, what was she even thinking? Coming along on this big quest when she couldn't talk or, really, do magic? Those were the only two things she had going for her! Literally anyone else would have been a better choice!

Constanze nudged her. Hannah ignored it.

Diana would have known exactly what to do, obviously: she probably knew that all golems had a secret off switch or something. Barbara... well, probably there was some Nightfall book that said how to defeat a golem. Even Akko would have been better at it. _Akko!_ At least she was good at not having magic.

At least she wouldn't have run away.

And Amanda....

Hannah closed her eyes and imagined how Amanda would take on the two-headed golem. She'd probably do some sort of sick flip to leap over the lasers, then take out both heads at once with a crazy spinning kick. Or maybe she'd land on its body between the heads, and jump out of the way just as both heads tried to shoot her, so they'd shoot each other instead....

_Amanda deserves someone who's actually a person._

Hannah sighed. Even if Constanze was right about Hannah crushing on Amanda, it wasn't as important as her being right about the other thing—and if she was right about _Amanda_ crushing on _Hannah_ , then more the pity. She had so much more going on in her life, and she really did deserve better—

Constanze punched her shoulder.

 _What?_ Hannah mouthed, her eyes opening.

Constanze jabbed a finger at the floor, and Hannah looked down. And then blinked.

 _She had so much more going on in her life, and she really did deserve better._ The words were spelled in glowing green, spilled out carelessly around the point of her wand. And then: _What?_

Hannah stared. _Did I do that?_ she thought, and the words slid out from her wand—the question serving as a confirmation. Constanze gave her a look which was, for once, not at all dismissive.

So, she could use her magic sort of effectively now. Hannah screwed up her face and thought, as loudly as she could, _Lampada!_ —and not only did the light shed by her wand not get brighter, the spell didn't even show up as a word coming from her wand. It had literally just been working a second before. Hannah gritted her teeth and pounded her wand hand into the ground. _Why wasn't it working?_

But Constanze tapped her shoulder, and put a finger to her own lips. And before Hannah could complain that _of course she was being quiet_ , Constanze tapped the finger against her own temple, before returning it to her lips.

Okay. Quiet _mind_. It was important to be calm.

What on earth did _Hannah_ do to calm down?

She glanced at Constanze. _Constanze_ seemed to have this 'calm' thing figured out. She was sitting down against the wall, not moving, just looking at Hannah and waiting for her to chill. It just... wasn't coming to Hannah the same way. What did Constanze do to get calm? And how was she so good at it?

Honestly... Hannah envied her. There, she'd admitted it to herself. Frankly, she'd probably envied Constanze for a while, even before the whole thing where she was supposed to start being nice to Green Team. _Especially_ before then, because Constanze had never been a viable target for bullying. Any insult had always bounced off, as if Constanze hadn't heard it at all, and nothing Hannah had done ever fazed the girl's quiet confidence.

And look at the two of them now! Constanze was following her passion, finding a secret mountain cave and doing battle with the monster inside to get her hands on some rare material. Hannah was... getting in the way.

Hannah stifled a sob. Stars above, she was so _useless_.

And then she noticed that Constanze's face was lit up green again, and looked down to see all those words from her internal monologue made external. She blushed, and flinched away—

Constanze reached up and rested a hand on her shoulder. For the first time, the look she gave Hannah was one of sympathy.

Hannah sighed. _I'm sorry,_ she thought, and the words came out of her wand. Constanze looked down at them, then back up at her, and smiled.

And now Hannah did feel a bit calmer. _Lampada?_

The chamber lit up. It was covered in more of those strange runes, and more scientific drawings, all over the walls—but Hannah wasn't worried about that right now. She looked back down at Constanze. _Sorry for bullying you, and for messing up your mission._

Constanze frowned, and then held her hand out toward Hannah's wand. Hannah hesitated, but handed it over. The light dimmed a little in the handoff, but Constanze had it just as bright again in a moment. She drew in the air to form her own words: _You_ _bailed_ _me out of there when_ _there wasn't anything I could do_ _. It's something Amanda would have done._

Then she handed the wand back over. Hannah took it, and the word _Really?_ spilled out without her having to think about it consciously.

Constanze took the wand again. _Well, that or I'd have to bail her out. But Austin was a while ago._ A little smirk accompanied the second sentence.

Hannah took the wand back. _What happened in Austin?_

_You know how Amanda acts cool? She's not. She once got hit on by this cute girl at a club in Austin,_ _turned_ _her brain to mush. The girl got her to buy stuff for her. She was gonna spend two grand on a pair of earrings before Jasminka and I dragged her away._

Hannah snorted, covering her hand with her mouth. _No way?_

 _Yes way._ _Jasminka had her over one shoulder for an hour._ Who knew that Constanze could be so chatty?

 _Now that you mention it, I think she might have been crushing on Akko for a little bit_ _._ They were passing the wand back and forth easily now, and both grinning. _Remember when she bought Akko that racing broom the day after she learned to fly?_

 _And then Akko crashed it into the New Moon Tower?_ Constanze snorted. After a few seconds, though, she sighed. _Amanda's smart, but not when it comes to crushes. That's... why I wanted you to come with me. I wanted to_ _vet you_ _for her._

 _Aww, that's sweet._ Hannah grinned, and grinned even more after she ruffled Constanze's hair and Constanze swatted her hand away. After a few seconds, though she frowned. _Not like it matters._

Constanze cocked her head to the side, so Hannah elaborated: _Not like I can sweep Amanda off her feet while we're stuck in a cave with a golem,_ _and no way to defeat it._

Constanze nodded, and groaned.

Hannah stood up and started pacing, her footsteps echoing, still thinking out loud—or, maybe, thinking out bright. Words littered the ground around her. _None of this makes sense!_ _I mean, since when do ancient treasure caves come with working traps? What, is a boulder going to roll down at us?_

A roll of the eyes from Constanze. Hannah interpreted it as sympathetic, rather than dismissive.

 _And another thing: that golem is_ _shite_ _at its job! If it wanted to, it could have hit me. I was on the ground for a couple seconds before you attacked. So why didn't it?_ _And—and another thing!_ She walked over to a nearby wall and smacked her hand against it. _What the hell is all this stuff on the walls? Is anyone supposed to know what this random bunch of gibberish is? Because—_

She stopped, and looked up at what had caught her eye. The increased light from her wand was able to reach higher up the wall than it had been before. She saw not just a single line of gibberish, but several lines. And moreover, each one looked different. _Those are different alphabets. Those curvy letters look way different from those angular ones, it's clearly a different language. What kind of message were they leaving in multiple languages?_

Constanze frowned, standing up and walking to her side.

 _And there's something else up there._ Just at the edge of her wand's light radius, Hannah saw the bottom parts of a final alphabet, but even when she stood on tiptoe she couldn't reach it, and she wasn't sure her magic was quite up to sending a light up there. _Constanze?_

Constanze looked at her. Hannah held out her wand for Constanze to take, then held her hands down to give Constanze a boost. Constanze stepped on, and Hannah lifted the girl above her head with minimal effort, then looked up.

 _Are you kidding me?_ she thought, staring up at the text.

It was ancient moon runes. The one, _single_ script that she would actually stand a chance at reading, and they'd tucked it away in a side room, at the top of the wall, _in the least visible place?_ Hannah clenched her teeth with frustration, but kept looking anyway. She... could actually do this.

_This... here... no place... not a place... valor? This is no valorous place? No... achievement... honored...._

After about a minute of this, she jostled Constanze, and then lowered her to the floor. Constanze gave her a questioning look, and Hannah knew what the question was without giving her the wand. She answered: _I knew Diana was really good at the lunar runes, so... I dunno, I guess I got it in my head that I wanted to be better at her in one thing. I studied lunar runes really hard._ _The runes up there aren't exactly the ones I studied, but they're close enough that I'm pretty sure what they say._

Constanze smiled as she took the wand back. _You're full of surprises._ _What do they say?_

Hannah flushed a bit at the compliment, but told her.

Constanze's eyes widened. _I know what this place is now. I know what that golem is. I think I know how to beat it._

* * *

When they returned to the main room, they had a plan. Hannah nodded at Constanze, and Constanze nodded at Hannah, and they split up.

Hannah didn't have her wand: Constanze was better at magic, so she'd gotten custody. What Hannah did have was a little scrap of rock, crumbled off a facade, which Constanze had enchanted to glow. It was a glow fueled by Constanze's magic: if something happened to Constanze, Hannah would be in the dark.

How lucky she was, then, to have the backup light source.

The golem was still stomping around distantly, its footfalls growing ever so slightly louder as Hannah crept forward. Faintly, in the distance, she could see its red glow, moving around as the golem searched for the intruders. It didn't fill her with the same fear this time.

Because Constanze and Hannah had figured out what this place was. And it all had to do with the mithrillium.

Mithrillium, as Constanze had finally explained, was useful as a never-ceasing source of magic. One could say it was made of the same thing as a sorcerer's stone, but in fact that wasn't quite true: it was a byproduct of the creation of the first stones, by ancient witches who had long passed into history. And yet the mithrillium remained, and would remain for centuries yet to come.

Another interesting thing about mithrillium was that its magic wasn't, per se, _safe_. There was nothing wrong with being near a sorcerer's stone, but spending too much time near the raw magic coming out of uncontained mithrillium could have, to put it mildly, unexpected side effects.

(Hannah had cussed Constanze out upon finding out _that_ little tidbit. Apparently Constanze had the means to contain it and channel the magic safely, but _come on_ , she couldn't have mentioned this bit _before?_ )

So what kind of manmade cave has a dangerous material hidden inside it, and measures taken to keep people away from that material?

Hannah kept moving. She couldn't see where Constanze was, and she wasn't actually looking. The plan wasn't to stay in direct contact, because any contact could mean alerting the golem. The plan was for Hannah to get on one end, and draw the golem's attention. Constanze, on the other hand, had a gun to find.

So Hannah kept creeping forward, and soon she was back in the place where all the walls were. They were covered in information, and she wished she had the time to drink it all in as she walked, but that could wait: she had to get around the golem. She could look at the accumulated knowledge of an ancient civilization later.

There was a kind of structure like this in the modern world, too. It had nothing to do with magic, but it was still created to hide dangerous materials. With warnings in multiple languages in the hope that at least one might survive into the distant future; with further warnings of death and injury, in pictures instead of words; with a wealth of knowledge stored inside the structure, to get across the idea that the people who made it knew what they were talking about.

The material was transuranic waste, and it was stored in nuclear waste bunkers.

After what felt like an hour, Hannah was in position. Her legs aching, she peered out from behind a wall. The golem wasn't so distant now, maybe twenty yards away, but it hadn't spotted her yet: its 'eyes' were still roving all around.

The floor had plenty of pieces of rubble all around, big and small. Hannah found a rock the size of her fist, tested its weight in her hand, and hurled it as hard as she could at the golem. It struck right in the torso.

The golem turned around—just its eyes, not the whole body. It briefly scanned down at the thrown rock, and then its roving gaze traveled down the floor toward her.

Earlier, she ran in a panic. This time, she stood up took a deep breath, and ran at a reasonable pace. Mostly.

She _did_ speed up a _little_ bit, maybe, when the lasers started coming at her.

So if this place was an ancient, magical nuclear waste bunker, then that meant it was created for a specific reason: to _keep future generations safe_. This was not some Indiana Jones style temple after all: there would be no pressure plates that triggered darts, or spikes sliding out of the walls.

Therefore, as Hannah ran into a corner, turned around, and found the golem right behind her, its eyes trained on her—she had to ask herself a question. Would the kind of society that created a special place to hold dangerous materials, a place meant to keep people safe, _kill_ the people it was trying to save?

The golem had its lights right on her, so it was a pretty pressing question—and even though the whole plan was predicated on knowing the answer, Hannah was definitely having doubts.

But as the golem stared at her, and she stared back, and the seconds ticked away... nothing happened. Hannah started with a sigh of relief, then a silent snicker, and then she outright laughed, and didn't care that there wasn't a sound. The golem had been trying to scare them away, not kill them.

Then, the golem stepped forward and reached out a hand, and she tensed. It might not be interested in killing her, but it could still grab her bodily to throw her out, and she didn't have any confidence that it wouldn't just _crush_ her by mistake—

A blast of light from beyond, and the golem staggered.

Constanze stood behind it, and she had her gun again—and sticking out the barrel were _both_ wands. She leveled it in front of her, and blasted again and again, and the golem kept staggering back. Hannah jumped out of the way as it reeled toward her, and as she eased around the side—staying well out of Constanze's way—she could see that this time, the shots were making an impact. Cracks were appearing on the golem's torso.

But the golem's eyes were pulsing red, and then orange. As Constanze pumped the forestock and aimed again, it trained its eyes on her and fired.

Constanze barely got the shield up in time, but this was a more intense pair of beams than before: Hannah had to throw up an arm to shield her eyes from the light, and the sound was louder than anything else she'd heard all day.

When she dared to lower her arm, Constanze was gritting her teeth. The shield was holding, but just barely, and it was filled with cracks and the golem wasn't letting up: it was fully focused on Constanze. Hannah's jaw clenched: what was she supposed to do?

Constanze glanced her way. The two of them locked eyes.

 _And she did that_ _stupid_ _head motion again_.

But this time, Hannah understood. She took a step back, hauled back with her arm, and chucked her luminous rock _right_ into the golem's closest eye.

As if it had been forced to blink, the beams were interrupted as the golem stepped back. A few seconds later, the eyes were lighting back up—but it was too late. An even stronger burst of light from Constanze's gun blasted into one of the eyes, turning it into nothing more than a shower of clay. The second eye swiveled frantically, but Constanze blasted that one next, and it was gone.

The decapitated golem swayed, then toppled backward. The _boom_ from its fall echoed throughout the cavern for what felt like minutes.

Hannah panted. Constanze was panting too. But she looked at Hannah, and raised her hand for a shaky thumbs up.

Hannah smiled, and raised her thumb too.

* * *

A week later, Hannah sat on a bed in the hospital wing. The school nurse gave her a pill, and she swallowed it dry. “All right,” the nurse said, “say ah.”

“ _Ah_ _hhh_ ,” Hannah said. And then blinked. Even knowing beforehand that the pill would remove the last lingering effects of the silencing spell, hearing her own voice again was a shock. “Ah. Ahaha! _La-la-la-la-la-la-la-laaaa!_ ” she sang, rising up an entire octave.

“Well, it sounds like you're all better now.” The nurse smiled. “Unless you have any questions for me, you're free to go.”

Hannah jumped to her feet and _skipped_ from the room. No more using her wand to spell words in the air instead of talking! No more spending twice as long to learn each spell! Thank goodness.

Although, really, it hadn't been so bad. It could have been _much_ worse.

As Hannah exited the hospital wing, she got a tap on the elbow, and stopped mid-skip. Constanze was waiting outside. _Everything's good?_ she asked.

 _Completely cured!_ Hannah grinned. _How's the mithrillium?_

Constanze glanced around, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the device she'd made from the mithrillium: it was the shape of a mushroom cap, and small enough to fit on a necklace. _Promotes mushroom growth when planted in the soil. Do you think she'll like it?_

Hannah smiled. _She'll love it._

The conversation was completely silent, and in fact Hannah only realized this after the fact: over the past week, she'd gotten used to Constanze's ersatz collection of hand signs and facial expressions, and gotten accustomed to responding in kind. It was very useful for communicating with Constanze—or her friends, if need be—but mostly useless for anyone else. Oh well, she'd had the wand-writing for that.

“Wow,” said a voice—an actual out loud voice, even. Hannah turned around and saw Amanda sauntering over, arms folded like a pillow behind her head. “You two are talking so fast _I_ can barely understand it.”

Hannah rolled her eyes.

“Oh, jeez, the silent treatment. You did get your voice back, right, Ariel?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Great! And you didn't even have to lose the legs.” Amanda grinned and, for some godforsaken reason, pointed a pair of finger guns at her. For some even more godforsaken reason, Hannah found she wasn't actually annoyed by it. It was... charming, if that was a word that could be applied to finger guns.

Of course, she wasn't going to say that _out loud_ , so—

Constanze slapped her on the back. “What?” Hannah blurted, looking down.

_Ask her out._

Hannah didn't respond for a few seconds. When she did, her hands didn't exactly move with the grace and certainty she'd learned. _Are you sure?_

Constanze nodded, then shoved her on the back again, hard enough to push her a few steps closer to Amanda. Then, she gave a thumbs up, turned around, and walked away.

“Uhhhh... what'd she say?” Amanda asked, frowning. “I didn't catch that.”

Hannah gulped. For the first time, she noticed—or maybe _let herself_ notice—how _debonair_ Amanda looked. “Amanda?” she said, recovering into a smile. “Can we talk?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say three things.
> 
> The first is that this fic is technically set about two years in the past, which means I can't have Constanze call Amanda a simp, _even though that's the perfect word_. ;__;
> 
> The second thing is: thank you all for reading this fic! I hope you've enjoyed it.
> 
> And finally, Happy Birthday once again to Hikarilie!


End file.
